Biden’s mugging and his inappropriate derisive laugh were as phony as his urinal white porcelain full toothed smile. He was distasteful in the extreme. Ryan was far from impressive. He is ten years short and it showed. Biden was an easy target and should have been dispatched with ease. There is nothing to get giddy about. It was a dreary example of American political mediocrity.

It's obvious the strategy was to not engage w/a moron and risk looking a bit that way in the process.

Everyone who's been paying any attention at all knows that Ryan is the ONLY GOP pol to directly confront and call Obama on his BS back when Barrack had him sit in the front row and proceed to dress him just like he did Alito and Co.

I have to be a bit parochial here. Parochial because Biden’s uber-smile smirk, demeaning interjections and mocking was a particularly parochial argumentative style. It’s a style from Philly. Also to be more specific Biden’s performance was meant to send mega-leg tickles down Chris Matthews leg. I think that’s why Biden made the many references to Tip O’Neill — working for Tip as a top aide was Chris Matthews’ career highlight. Pleasing Chris Matthews meant that MSNBC and the union and bureaucrat thug wing of the base would be happy.

The Philly Catholic School schools produce a largely Irish-Italian work product of graduates who love that mocking, bully, gotcha style of debate and consider it manly and potent. Not only the incessant mocking, laughing and smirking are characteristic — but the short-cut “That’s just BS!” method of rejoinder. There’s really nothing to ponder or consider, it’s just the aggressive assertion of infallible doctrine that you MUST accept and support — that’s the whole of such an argument, period. Get with the group. The Philly area unions are full of such swaggering bluster in leaders and thugs.

Berserker? Sure, sure, that’s an interesting take. But we all know that really its just Philly Union Thug style. PERIOD. Anything else is just a load of it.

When Lara Logan of CBS News stepped before a packed Chicago ballroom last week, she quickly corrected the newspaper editor who introduced her by noting she’d warned him not to “screw up” the introduction.

No, she told the annual lunch of the Better Government Association, she asked him not to “fuck it up.”

That jest set the tone for a provocative address before 1,100 in which the foreign correspondent and 60 Minutes star skewered American policy in Afghanistan and Libya, called for a ramped-up military campaign against terrorists, and criticized the Obama administration and others for both underestimating the Taliban’s strength in Afghanistan and for tolerating Pakistan’s obvious coddling of terrorists killing American soldiers.

Vice President Joe Biden claimed that the administration wasn't aware of requests for more security in Libya before the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi during Thursday night's debate, contradicting two State Department officials and the former head of diplomatic security in Libya.

"We weren't told they wanted more security. We did not know they wanted more security there," Biden said.

In fact, two security officials who worked for the State Department in Libya at the time testified Thursday that they repeatedly requested more security and two State Department officials admitted they had denied those requests.

"All of us at post were in sync that we wanted these resources," the top regional security officer in Libya over the summer, Eric Nordstrom, testified. "In those conversations, I was specifically told [by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb] ‘You cannot request an SST extension.' I determined I was told that because there would be too much political cost. We went ahead and requested it anyway."

Nordstrom was so critical of the State Department's reluctance to respond to his calls for more security that he said, "For me, the Taliban is on the inside of the building."

"We felt great frustration that those requests were ignored or just never met," testified Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, a Utah National Guardsman who was leading a security team in Libya until August.

It would be one thing if this had been a bunch of hick congressmen from the plains asking a panel of MIT professors about, say, ozone depletion, or the potential dangers of nuclear fallout. But these were members of the Senate Banking Committee, asking Dimon questions as though he were an alien from another world: "Tell us, Mr. CEO, what is this ‘derivative trading’ to which you refer? How long has it been in use on your planet?" The whole tenor of the proceeding was incredibly embarrassing, and showed just how unlikely it is that you’ll ever get anything like real questioning in a Senate hearing when a) the level of general expertise among the members is so shamefully low, and b) the witness is a man who controls millions of dollars of campaign contributions.

It's not FDR's White House anymore. Another sound bite getting extended play from the Big Interview yesterday is Erskine Bowles' estimate of a one-third chance equally distributed among three possible outcomes: nothing is done, something happens but too late, or Congress writes it's own Spike Lee "Do the Right Thing" movie. Sobering skepticism.

Crimmins prediction, that JP Morgan would try to blame traders for the position marks, has proven to be correct. Tonight, the lead story in the New York Times business section is “At JPMorgan, an Inquiry Built on Tapes,” with this as the summary:

Investigators examining a multibillion-dollar trading loss at JPMorgan Chase are focusing on calls in which employees openly discussed how to value troubled bets in a favorable way.

So the press is taking the JP Morgan party line that that exculpates management, when it doesn’t, particularly when JP Morgan’s practice was so radically out of line with industry norms.

Lance Armstrong's oft-repeated claim that he'd never tested positive for doping was the result of some elaborate masking techniques—and some less-sophisticated methods, like hiding from testers, according to a US Anti-Doping Agency report. Cyclists have to keep national anti-doping groups updated on their whereabouts. But if they simply don't answer the door when testers come to call, they can avoid getting a warning from officials. Armstrong also frequently holed himself up in a remote Spanish hotel, making it "virtually certain" he wouldn't face tests, the agency says.

Armstrong's masking techniques included using saline smuggled by a doctor to make blood values appear normal. In other cases, the cyclist used hormones and blood doping techniques that were untraceable at the time. Later, more advanced retesting offered "resoundingly positive values," the report said, according to the New York Times. Of course, Armstrong wasn't the only one doping, and the report adds that team members' wives and girlfriends were aware of it, the Wall Street Journal reports. Some tried to reveal the cyclists' illicit activities, but Armstrong's ex-wife, Kristin, was complicit in the scheme, the report says. She called it a "necessary evil," Betsy Andreu, wife of cyclist Frankie, said in an affidavit.

As a generational matter, we pass a whole economy, society and environment to our children. Unless we have given them a really bad education, they would be crazy to opt for a government with a lower national debt in exchange for a weaker economy, a worse infrastructure or more damaged environment. As a practical matter, the sharp upturn in productivity growth in 1995 has virtually assured our children and grandchildren that they will enjoy far higher living standards than anything we could have done by way of lower deficits (and thereby boosting investment) had productivity growth remained at its much slower pre-1995 rate. (The fact that longstanding deficit hawks like Peter Peterson never acknowledge the impact of this uptick on productivity growth suggests that their agenda has little to do with the living standards of future generations.)

Jobless claims were better than expected, even after adjusting for a possible unusual anomaly There may have been an unusual anomaly that made this week's jobless claims look better than they would otherwise have been.

UPDATE: In response to our story, California's Employment Development Director issued a statement saying the state "has reported all UI claims data and submitted the date on time." A spokesperson for the department also offered an alternative explanation for the drop in California's unemployment claims: "Our weather has been unusually warm which has had some typical seasonal patterns in employment delayed."

The California spokesperson also demanded a "retraction" of what the Labor Department told us. We accurately reported what the Labor Department told us, so we stand by our story. In a follow-up exchange, we asked the spokesperson how California could be sure it had submitted all of its claims on time. The spokesperson did not respond to the question. She simply reiterated that the Labor Department analyst we spoke to was "wrong."

Deuce is Bond cool on steroids. Rufus is mad at Obama because cool and intellectually aloof doesn't win elections. Deuce hates Obama for reasons of his own. Gag Reflex hates Obama from the removed perch of disdain where he practices new doggie tricks. Kindly stop it. Obama is being savaged for reasons that have little to do with policy or substance. Wall St wants Obama out and Romney in. Pretty simple. Neither subtlety nor sophistication required.

SPECIAL NOTE OF CAUTION #2: The sample of debate-watchers in this poll were 31% Democratic and 33% Republican. That indicates that the sample of debate watchers is about eight points more Republican than an average CNN poll of all Americans, so the respondents were more Republican than the general public.

Social Security works pretty good. Medicare works pretty good. Our farm programs have worked pretty well. Medicaid does a good job. We have a Military, and an FBI. The Blue States send money to the Red States through Block Grants.

The State Department’s Victoria Nuland’s briefing with reporters shows how careful she must be. Those who want to watch the video of her briefing can view it here. Take the killling of a Yemeni security agent employed by the Embassy. Even though the New York Times reports that “a senior Yemeni officer working in the United States Embassy in Sana was killed here in the capital on Thursday in an attack that security sources said bore the hallmarks of the regional franchise of al-Qaeda” Nuland had to make the following statement.

QUESTION: Does that mean that you don’t know if he was targeted because he was an employee? This could have been – as far as you know, this could have been just a random act of crime – criminality?

MS. NULAND: It could – he could have been killed for reasons that had something to do with his job or reasons that had nothing to do with his job.

The carefulness was evident elsewhere. In an extraordinary exchange Ms. Nuland was asked by reporters why even though the State Department knew or strongly suspected that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was planned from the first they deferred to higher authorities who insisted a video might have something to do with it.

QUESTION: And yet Under Secretary Kennedy and other people in this building knew, or felt in their opinion, that that was not correct, and that this was –

MS. NULAND: I’m not going to get into the personal feelings of anybody. I’m simply going to say that in making public statements, one depends on the totality of what the Administration knows.

QUESTION: But you didn’t. You never said that.

MS. NULAND: Look, I’m generally dumber than most of the rest of the government. I mean, that’s what I’m paid to be. (Laughter.)

But, there is a possibility that a Conservative Justice could have a heart attack, or get run over by a bus, so I guess I have to admit that I'd rather have a liberal, forward-looking Court, than a backward-looking Conservative one.

SIDNEY, Ohio (AP) -- The crowds tell the story. As Election Day nears, Mitt Romney is drawing large and excited throngs.

Look to dusty Iowa cornfields, rain-soaked Virginia parks, the muddy fields of the Shelby County Fairgrounds, where a crowd of 9,500 - almost half of this western Ohio town - gathered among the barns and stables on a frigid October evening this week to glimpse the Republican presidential contender.

"Where else would we want to be?" said one of the shivering faithful, Judy Cartwright, a 71-year-old nurse from Sidney. "I want to see the next president of the United States."

Romney's debate performance against President Barack Obama last week - and his energetic appearances following it up - have fueled a rise in enthusiasm on the campaign trail. Whether or not it will translate into votes, polls do suggest that Republicans are fired up. It's a welcome development for the Republican businessman, who is hardly a natural politician and has long struggled to match Obama's ability to inspire excitement.

In Virginia, for example, Republican leaning counties appear to be getting the fastest start on absentee voting ahead of Election Day. State Board of Elections data analyzed by the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonprofit and nonpartisan tracker of money in state politics, shows that of the 25 localities where absentee voting is busiest, 21 voted Republican in the 2008 presidential race. And of the 25 localities where absentee balloting is the slowest so far, 16 supported Obama.

Cristina Beato, a former Health and Human Services acting assistant secretary, spoke directly to the camera: "There was an angry pounding on the door, in the middle of the night. I'm a single mom. I feared for my kids and for myself. It was Richard Carmona and I was his boss."

Carmona, a Democrat who previously was a lifelong independent, including when he was President George W. Bush's Surgeon General from 2002-2006, clashed with his boss, Beato, throughout his tenure. The controversy led to a 2007 investigation by the Democratic-led Congress. Carmona said then that he was being targeted and silenced for raising questions about stem cell research and other science-related issues.

The Carmona campaign responded to the ad, calling the allegations "false" and painted Beato as a "partisan who was caught trying to politicize science."

"Congressman Flake's decision to run this false ad is deplorable and shows how desperate he is," campaign manager Alexis Tameron wrote in a statement.

Because, dougo, he is a 'Public Figurr' and as such cannot be slandered. Then 'charging' is a criminal case, he'd haveeeeee to sue in civil court, and because of his running for Senate, the case would be dismissed.

The 3/5 Compromise was a political negotiation by the South to acheive more voting power in the national legislature.

They used the (possibly real) threat of alliance with the British (the South liked the economic business they had with the British), as well as the threat that a country fractured between North and South would eventually succumb to one or more of the old empires (Britain, France and Spain) to achieve the 3/5 Compromise.

These threats were used as leverage to achieve voting power in the legislature for slaves , of course these new votes would be cast in their masters' interest.

I didn't call you a traitor. Just foolish. And you're the one that brought up your heritage. You called me a racist, denigrated the idea of thinking culture counts. So, I retaliate and mention the history of slavery among the Cherokee. To dismount you from your high horse. We are all Americans of mixed origins. Every last one of us. And you go back far enough, we all have common ancestors. Everybody knows this.

One more Obama court appointee, and you have no more 2nd Amendment rights.

At one time, I remember you saying, without the 2nd Amendment, we have nothing. That is what you will get. Nothing.

And so I think you are a fool of the first order voting for someone who will eagerly take your own rights away, leaving you with nothing.

Mitt Romney’s 7-point lead in the TBT/Herald/Mason-Dixon poll is the latest sign of a Florida surge:

The survey conducted this week found 51 percent of likely Florida voters supporting Romney, 44 percent backing Obama and 4 percent undecided. That’s a major shift from a month ago when the same poll showed Obama leading 48 percent to 47 percent — and a direct result of what Obama himself called a “bad night” at the first debate.

The debate prompted 5 percent of previously undecided voters and 2 percent of Obama backers to move to Romney. Another 2 percent of Obama supporters said they are now undecided because of the debate.

Any poll that shows a shift as significant as this one should be taken with caution. But there are other indications that there’s strong momentum behind Romney in Florida, including today’s Rasmussen (which shows Romney +4) and ARG (which shows Romney +3). There’s also the assessment of the Suffolk University pollsters, who pulled out of Florida, Virginia and North Carolina this week after saying Romney has already definitively locked up these states.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.